What You’ll Find Here

Some fiction, lots of opinion of the world today and how it got this way, some photo essays of Montreal.  A lot of art throughout.  

Constructive feedback on my art and writing appreciated.  I’d love to hear from you.

Blue and Brown make Grey

©2002 Marion Pennell

When I was young I wanted colouring books without dark thick black lines outlining the objects. (I finally did have one – of animals! – with faint grey lines, so that no lines showed when you were done.) There are no outlines in life, one thing ends where the other begins, even if the other is the sky or the wall. The colour and shadow.

The best year of my life

June 7th is my Liberation Day.  One year ago I shed the burden of anxiety, depression, and PTSD – when I learned my abuser – my teenage boyfriend – was not only merely dead, he was really most sincerely dead.

©2006 Marion Pennell

Music abounded: Let It Go, Brave, Everything is Beautiful, I am Woman, I’m Free… The soundtrack in my head flipped to joyous.

Memento Mori

When I was taking courses for my DEC in Special Ed (Adult Ed night classes downtown), we learned about suicide.  Which methods each gender tried, each age group tried. And the repercussions.  Many people that jumped – if they survived, they essentially made themselves dependent disabled people for life.  We heard about metro drivers, and how devastating it is to hit a person. Suicide by cop. There are so many many repercussions.

©2000 Marion Pennell

Thanks Clara Hughes

Thank you Clara Hughes, the Olympian, for opening up frank and honest dialogue about mental illness in Clara’s Big Ride around our country.

In the late 1990s, the last time I was suicidal, I also went through a period of unemployment during which I assigned myself tasks each day, however small, to get me to do something.  One day I memorized Hamlet’s soliloquy, which seemed apt, since it is a rumination on suicide.  I read it all, but felt it summed up the arguments, pro and con, in just these stanzas, so that is what I memorized, and play in my head, as required.

I live white privilege, I didn’t earn it

©2000 Marion Pennell

Currently there are 54 countries in Africa.  I have met people (and have had enough of a conversation to say I know a little about them) from Cameroon, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Morocco, South Africa, Tunisia, and Uganda.  The man from Uganda was a Hindu living there, and under Idi Amin’s regime had to flee with just the clothes on his back.  I can’t even imagine.

I remember

©2005 Marion Pennell

I went to the funeral back in December 1989.  Not inside the basilica, we stood outside in the cold.  There were speakers to broadcast the service.  It was in French, but I couldn’t understand most of it because of the outdoor acoustics, not the language.  It didn’t matter.  We all knew what was being said.  Eleven of the fourteen shared a funeral.  Eleven hearses.  It was very cold, but nobody complained.  There were a lot of men too, that helped.

“Woman with skirt up run faster than man with pants down”

Ask your mother this:  As a woman have you ever felt threatened or unsafe or less-than because of a man? Ask her.  Did you tell anyone?  Every time?  Call the cops?  File a complaint?

My story is not remarkable, ask any woman.  Not including the boyfriend who abused me in multiple ways and broke my rib, just the ones that come to mind easily… When I was 6, a bunch of older boys stole my books and harassed me and asked me to show my underwear. -I was timid but I did it because I needed my books back. I told my mother and she told me no matter what anyone said or did, I should never let anyone make me do anything.

You can get it if you really want

“‘Cause as sure as the sun will shine

I’m gonna get my share now, what’s mine”

I AM going to get my share of the truth, of respect, of human rights!!

“But I’d rather be a free man in my grave

Than living as a puppet or a slave”

Fitting epitaph for anyone   (above from “The Harder They Come” )

Rivers of Babylon
© Marion Pennell

Heather spelled backwards

 

Every girl was hopeful at one time.
©2001 Marion Pennell

Who are these men?

http://yesmeansyesblog.wordpress.com/2009/11/12/meet-the-predators/

“The overwhelming prevalence of acquaintance over stranger rapes and of intoxication over overt force, and the relative rarity of weapon use and physical injuries, is easily explained. Rapists know what works. They like to rape, they want to keep doing it, they want not to be caught. It is in their interest to be very sensitive to which accounts of rape are believed and which are attacked and to know which targets and methods are lowest-risk for them.

What they do is what works. They rape their drunk acquaintances because it works. They rape their drunk acquaintances because we let them.”